Jimenez talks about WBC experience after shocking upset

Ubaldo Jimenez wasn’t just fantastic Tuesday night, he was historic. The Rockies’ powerful right-hander struck out a World Baseball Classic 10 batters, a performance that was muted by a stunning 2-1, 11-inning loss to the Netherlands that has already been called a national embarrassment in the Dominican Republic.
Jimenez delivered as advertised. The Rockies’ budding start allowed just two hits. He talked about his experience in a postgame press conference.
“When I came to the game, I came to concentrate only on following all the batters. And as everyone knows we have a limit of pitching to do. There’s a limit of 70 (pitches). I want to push them to get a lot of outs and not waste time.
“As I said before, no one before a game is going to think, ‘well, tonight I’m going to strike 9 or 10 out.’ You never think that. You can only think I’m going to go and attack each batter and try to play a good game. And things will come out well, thank God.’’
Pedro Martinez praised Jimenez, but not without questioning the WBC restrictions, format and process. His thoughts:
“We have to be clear on something. There’s so many millions of dollars invested in baseball players that you have to understand, even if you don’t want to, even if it hurts, you have to understand that unfortunately that is the reality of what’s going on.The teams want to care for their players. And with the little time that we have to prepare, I believe that we were the only team that were all separated — you practice on your own without even practicing the plays until we got to Jupiter the first day, which was where we were to start practicing.’’
“The only team that were taken away from their manager and strategists was ours. That justifies this also in terms of why so many of those teams didn’t allow or would not get the liberty either, to the key players that they have. I believe that that is the main reason why we have to go to young guys, who are not even trained to go out for five innings, they left on four. (Jimenez) pitched with that limitation. That’s a huge investment for Colorado. If he gets hurt in a classic like this, it’s a lot more unfortunate for him and his career, first of all. And for the team that he belongs to.’’

Patrick, a third-generation Colorado native, is back for his second stint covering the Rockies. He first covered the team from 2005-2009, helping chronicle “Rocktober” in 2007 and also following the team’s playoff run in 2009.

Nick Groke has worked at The Denver Post since 1997, as a sports reporter, city reporter, entertainment writer and digital editor and producer, among other newsroom posts. He also writes regularly about boxing, soccer, MMA and NASCAR.